The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Getting to Not Guilty

Well, Judges Kathy Williams and Bob Scola have their first federal trials under their belts. The jury in both cases came back with not guilty verdicts across the board. Nice holiday presents to the defendants!

Let me handle this. When a defendant is found not guilty it means that the system works. That an individual and his/her attorney can stand up to the representative of the most poweful government on earth and say "I demand you prove your accusations to twelve neutral citizens who are my peers ." It means that 12 citizens came to court and were not intimidated by the government and made a decision based on facts , not fear or bias.

Your comment implies that where there is smoke there is fire. That all people who are arrested and charged are guilty. As Texas just exonerated its 75th person in a decade by DNA we know that is just not true. We know that as we have seen by the Caravella case in Broward that even the most experienced prosecutors and detectives assigned to the most serious cases can and do make tragic mistakes. Caravella spent 25 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. With a 67 IQ we are now learning his confession was beaten out of him by two detectives with yellow page phone books.

So while you may think an unjustice was done because police don't arrest innocent people, those of us in the trenches know ofherwise and thus we celebrate when the system works and juries make reasoned decisions based on a fair presentation of evidence.

But you're similarly making an assumption -- namely, that a "not guilty" verdict vindicates an innocent defendent.

I've worked in the federal system, and have seen juries get it dead wrong. In those scenarios, a defense verdict doesn't show that the system works.

As a result, to me, when you seem to celebrate defense verdicts without discussing the substance of the case, it seems like the same kind of slanted, biased mindset that defense attorneys accuse the government of holding.

The Southern District of Florida blog was started by David Oscar Markus, who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.